13.11.2000

This is from Geeta Bharathan, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. I study plant evolution, have had a longish stint with the Indian Council for Agricultural Research, and continue to have a keen interest in agricultural and other issues in developing countries.

I have closely followed the very interesting discussion so far (in particular the clear and insightful posts of Michel Ferry and Allan Hruska). I would like to raise a few questions that I hope will elicit some answers.

As I see it, the argument in favour of genetic modification (GM) technology (and I deliberately use this term because it is this aspect of biotechnology that fuels discussions such as these) goes something like this:

1. The 'food problem' is one of keeping food production in pace with population increase.

2. Increased population growth will be in developing countries that will have to increase food imports. (That is, the solution to the 'food problem' lies in increased production in developed nations. Is this inevitable? What role do the new trade regulations play in making it inevitable or not?)

3. GM technology is critical for our ability to keep up this increase in food production.

Given that some versions of 1-3 are correct, then these must follow:

a) IF genotype is a limitation in DEVELOPED nations, THEN GM is a critical, perhaps essential, part of the solution to the 'food problem' (Can this be established?)

b) When GM technology is said to be indispensible to 'feed the starving millions of the world,' at issue are applications WITHIN DEVELOPED NATIONS.

c) The ecological, envioronmental, and health issues raised in developed nations are hostile to this long-term objective of feeding the world. (Are these real or apparent conflicts of interest? If real, how are they to be resolved? By whom?)

In this situation, does GM technology have a role in developing nations? An international report (http://www.nap.edu/html/transgenic) laid out some possibilities: improve production stability, give nutritional benefits (hotly contested here), reduce environmental impacts, make pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Are these realistic, or are they the baseless pipe dreams of biotechnologists? [The report referred to is entitled "Transgenic plants and world agriculture" and was presented under the auspices of the Royal Society of London, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences in July 2000...Moderator]

Food production in developed nations accompanied by increased trade may be expected to resolve the problem of hunger in developing countries. But what about food security? According to the World Food Summit, "food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life." [All documentation from the World Food Summit can be found at http://www.fao.org/wfs/homepage.htm ...Moderator]

Investing huge amounts in a technology that would enable, and consolidate, increased import of food from developed to developing nations cannot lead to food security because:

i) a major cause for hunger is lack of purchasing power -- unless export from developed nations is a continued charity (not a desirable state);

ii) agriculture is a major source of employment in most developing nations, and any technological solutions to the food problem have to consider this

In other words, the application of GM technology in the developed nations for making up projected deficits in food production cannot, by itself, solve the 'food problem.' However, the logical structure of the argument presented above seems to suggest that this is what is expected.

Geeta Bharathan
Assistant Professor
Department of Ecology & Evolution
State University of New York
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5245, USA
Phone: (631)-632-9508
Fax: (631)-632-7626
geeta@life.bio.sunysb.edu

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org For further information on the FAO Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp ]

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 9:15 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: Biotechnology and hunger/food security

In reply to Michel Ferry's message [11 November]:

I disagree. I believe that we should define what is a transgenic crop, what are the differences of these plants with respect to other breeding products before saying anything about their potential benefits/risks for developing countries. Definition is always the problem about biotech sentiments. I heard continuously, about potential risk of newly introduced genes (potential ecological disasters, potential health problems, potential etc.) but nobody bothers to investigate the potential risks of the new genes (and new proteins) of new released varieties. [Presumably, Allesandro refers to non-GM varieties...Moderator]

Once we have defined the transgenic plants, we can decide if we can use them or not in agriculture and than set priorities about useful traits for developing countries.

Alessandro Pellegrineschi
Cell Biologist
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
Apdo. Postal 6-641
06600 Mexico, D.F., MEXICO
PH: (52) 5804-7537 [In USA: (650) 833-6655]
FX: (52) 5804-7558, 7559 [In USA: (650) 833-6656]
EM: A.Pellegrineschi@cgiar.org
(CIMMYT home page on WWW: www.cimmyt.cgiar.org)

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 9:34 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Developing countries to develop their own biotechnology

My name is Soraj Hongladarom. I teach philosophy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.

As far as developing countries go, Thailand has been relatively fortunate in not having to face the problem of starvation and hunger to the same extent as some other countries. In fact the country has been a net exporter of food for many years, and is well known as one the world's leading producers and exporters of rice. This accomplishment has been achieved very largely without the help of the technology of genetic engineering, especially the GMO technology.

However, as stated in the Background Document to this conference, the world population is increasing, and the traditional way of farming might not be adequate in the long run. Thus I think the use of agricultural biotechnology will perhaps be a not-too-distant future. However, as many have stated in the conference, the problem of hunger is intricately tied with other problems, especially poverty. Thus, in order to reduce hunger it is necessary that poverty has to be reduced too.

Certainly biotechnological products can go a long way towards alleviating poverty in the countries that produce them. More to the point, biotechnology not only alleviates poverty; it 'enriches' those who master it. This is why the problem of hunger is less severe in the so called 'developed' countries. In fact biotechnology, together with information technology, is being heralded as the next 'wave' of technology that drives the economy forward. The US, for example, is aggressively pushing biotechnological products such as GM crops in the world market, and this is seen as a way of maintaining the level of economic growth in the US in the face of increasing economic competition around the world.

But on the other side of the world, the pressing concern is not to find a hi-tech way to drive the economy forward, but it is to feed the populace so that they are no longer hungry. But if the biotechnological products purported to help reduce hunger actually come exclusively from those countries referred to in the previous paragraph, then I don't see how the hunger and poverty problem can be reduced. [The same point was made by Geeta Bharathan in her message posted today...Moderator].

One only sees the transfer of money from developing countries to developed ones as prices the developing countries have to pay for biotechnological products. This has been the case for more than a century now. In former (and present) times we see money being paid by developing countries for such products as cars or computers, with the developing countries selling their own natural resources for the money to buy those cars. And now we are possibly seeing the same trend toward buying GM products. And if these GM products have become necessary as the means to alleviate hunger in the developing countries, then the economic dependence could be total.

The way out, I believe, is for the developing countries to develop their own biotechnology in order to suit their own particular environments and localities. I believe this is the only way countries can live together in the ever-increasingly interdependent world. Help from the developed countries should not come in the form of giving away of ready made, ready-to-be-consumed products, but the in form of education and technology transfer so as to create technologies that respond exactly to the localities, and not something that can create products for the global market.

Soraj Hongladarom
Department of Philosophy
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Tel. (+662) 218-4756 Fax. (+662) 218-4867
e-mail: hsoraj@chula.ac.th

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 1:56 PM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Transfer of knowledge behind biotechnology

My name is Gerry Douglas and I work as a researcher in Teagasc, The Agriculture and Food Development Authority, Ireland.

I believe that the best way for developing countries to gain from modern biotechnology and all its various benefits and uses is to ensure that they each have a core of scientists fully trained in the fields of agronomy, plant breeding and biotechnology. Developed countries have a moral obligation to ensure that the knowledge behind the technology is transmitted and shared. This obligation could be achieved through an International Agreement among countries.

The important questions on the output of food from traditional farming relate to:

In this debate it is very important to remember the genesis of the biotech seeds which are currently available on the market. Many of them have genes for resistance to insects or herbicides - why were they developed first?

In the 1960s and 1970s, the chemical companies found that the costs of developing new agrochemicals were too expensive. At the same time, environmentalists expressed justifiable concern about the levels of agrochemical residues in soil and food. As government agencies (first in the developed countries & followed by developing countries) banned those chemicals, which were very stable and persistent, the chemical industry began to search for less persistent chemicals to control fungi and insects. Naturally occurring chemicals were identified but their chemical persistence and effectiveness was poor unless they were repeatedly applied.

At this point in the 1980s it became feasible to have the plants produce these labile chemicals within their cells so as to control the insects which ate the plants (through genetic engineering) .The chemical industries realised that genetic engineering could provide some alternatives to synthetic chemicals, so they set about buying up seed companies to sell their new technology as products via the seeds.

At present, biotechnology enriches those companies who master it and they will continue to develop (improved ?) products for the most lucrative markets available (mostly in the developed world). It is necessary for developing countries to demand a scheme for sharing this knowledge so they can adequately evaluate its potential on a regional basis and have their share of this technical revolution.

Dr. Gerry Douglas
Teagasc, Kinsealy Research Centre
Malahide Rd. Dublin 17
Ireland
Phone: 353 1 8460644 Fax:353 1 8460524
e-mail: gdouglas@kinsealy.teagasc.ie

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 5:58 PM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Golden Rice and "silver bullets'

Several recent posts have referred to the so-called Seven Academies report issued on GMO foods and food security [Geeta Bharathan referred to it, 13 November ...Moderator]. The full text of the report can be accessed at http://www.biotech-info.net/sevenNAS.html

In a review of the Seven Academies report, I address many of the issues under discussion before the group in the last few days. I served as the Ex. Dir. of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Board on Ag from 1984-1990 when many of the Academy's early biotech reports were done; in my comments, I point out several many changes in tone and substance in this latest report. My review is about 4 pages, and hence I am posting where it can be accessed on Ag BioTech InfoNet http://www.biotech-info.net/sevenNAS.html

Both farmers in the field and scientists/technologists have a natural inclination to look for and embrace "silver bullets", or sea-change solutions, or major breakthroughs. This tendency helps keep mankind optimistic, searching, and moving forward. But when this optimism gets taken up, magnified and reinforced in the private sector, in an era like today when capital knows no boundaries or loyalty and fortunes are being made with high-tech solutions to all sorts of problems, balance, perspective and reason can fall by the wayside (i.e., receive less attention, become less important).

There are important problems and issues with Golden rice that stand in the path of its adoption and use; we have discussed some in recent posts. One of the major reasons it has become a lightning rod for debate over GMO technologies, and who will gain and who will lose, is this question: Suppose a well balanced team of scientists, policy leaders and agriculture and nutrition practitioners came together, heavily weighted toward people with on-the-ground experience in the countries with Vitamin A problems. They are given $300 million to invest over 10 years in solving the problem, and can pick any paths or partners. Who among us can imagine a rational, fact-driven process leading to the outcome that all the money should be invested in GMO Vit. A rice?

Just as farmers need diversity and balance to sustain yields, these attributes are also valuable in the world of science and technological development. One of the biggest problems with the momentum behind GMO food technologies is that there is little time or room for these attributes, or for the careful reflection and good research needed to help us understand where this might lead us. That makes some people nervous.

Charles Benbrook Ag BioTech
InfoNet http://www.biotech-info.net
Benbrook Consulting Services
CU FQPA site http://www.ecologic-ipm.com
5085 Upper Pack River Road IPM site
Sandpoint, Idaho 83864
Voice: (208)-263-5236
Fax: (208)-263-7342
E-mail: benbrook@hillnet.com

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